Wcs

[sluggers]

Wow. PAC-10 won the CWS. Again. How surprising...


* Brombacher sore arm may have cost Florida the championship. A better pitcher might have been able to limit Arizona State to 4 or 5 runs.
* The biggest surprise was Baylor's Whitney Canion. I thought the days of a pitcher carrying a team on her shoulders were over.
* Missouri may be the next team to win the CWS. Chelsea Thomas is close to being a phenomenal pitcher. Big problem is that Missouri's offense failed to deliver.
* If Alabama ever hopes to win, they are going to have to start playing some better competition at the beginning of the season.
* The spanking that ASU gave Florida shows that the SEC still has a ways to go.

 

[MsDinosaur]

IA. Not very surprising and ASU obviously deserved to win.

But I was kinda, sorta hoping Florida would, just to put an end to the announcers unending breathless mantra of "Will THIS be the year the SEC finally wins it?" Now I have to sit through at least one more year of that every time I watch an SEC game (and probably even some non-SEC games to boot). Argh.

Whitney Canion was awesome. I enjoyed hearing Michelle Smith talk about how she was so impressed by her when Whitney showed up at a camp of hers as a teenager.

I'd love to see Mizzou win it, but yes, they need a more potent offense.

Maybe it's just me, but if I was a big-hitting HS prospect, I think I'd look for teams that most needed hitting (like Missouri or Baylor), so that I'd be likely to be a starter. It seems like the teams that are already full of great hitters just keep getting more to wait behind them. Or maybe it's their coaches who turn the girls into great hitters...

 

[LAdad]

I agree that Florida could have spend more time developing their #2 pitcher. But the same seems true for all other teams. Considering how everyone rides their one pitcher, nearly every team must believe they would be in serious trouble if their ace gets injured. (It's 14-0, you have to play again tomorrow, how about giving your previous top-pitcher a taste of the world series?)

Did anyone else feel that Florida made a lot of fielding errors, especially in the outfield? It sometimes seemed that for every hr they hit, they also made a run-scoring error.

 

[Jdaddy]

I believe I heard ASU committed ZERO errors in the WCWS. This, along with timely hitting and a pitcher with unbelievable ball placement, is why ASU won. I didn't get to see them until the tournament and all I can say is "Wow, what a team."

 

[tmolina]

I also wonder what effect it is has that ASU has 10 extra players ready to take anyone's spot and that ASU can run constant scrimmages with this "practice" squad. I would say practice technique and coaching, not anything that the SEC could do specifically.

I agree with this comment, but Florida should be able to do the same thing. It came down to better defense and better pitching! Great pitching beats great hitting, and Florida had great hitting but ASU had great pitching!

 

[sluggers]

But does that mean 10 extra scholarships? Just how do you get players to just be on a practice squad and only have a small shot at ever getting to play?

You have open tryouts for the team. You tell them that X number of players will be on the regular team and that Y number of players will be on the practice squad. For ASU, there will likely by kids don't even make the practice squad.

After that, you occasionally exchange the bottom 2 or 3 players on the regular team with the top 2 or 3 players of the practice squad. That way, the practice squad players think they have a chance of being on the regular team.

My guess is that most of the players on the practice squad are freshmen and sophomores.

 

[Amy in AZ.]

Well, we know that they can't be softball scholarships, because those are limited. But, they could be athletes from other sports. They could be on academic scholarship, they could be AZ. natives with in state scholarships or some are wealthy and just don't care about the money.

I wondered about travel money, but I guess that could come from boosters. It would all be public record, I imagine.